A baby arrives in America from a home in turmoil. A family in Kansas raises him. And he struggles to balance two identities.
Comic books, TV shows and films have repeatedly recounted these details from Superman’s backstory over the past 87 years. But the director of the latest big-screen adaptation drew backlash recently when he stated something that’s been said many times before: Superman is an immigrant.
“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” director James Gunn told The Times of London. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
Coming as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdowns, the comments quickly sparked criticism from right-wing media personalities. A Fox News banner blasted the new movie as “Superwoke” as pundits offered their takes.
“We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology on to us,” said former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Dean Cain, an actor who starred for years on TV in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” and is now a conservative commentator, told TMZ he didn’t like Gunn’s comments and speculated that the director’s decision to invoke immigration while promoting the film could be a costly mistake.
And longtime fans and historians of the comic books note that Gunn’s comments weren’t superimposing a new storyline on the beloved hero.
“The idea of Superman being an immigrant, or maybe a refugee, has been part of the character’s mythos since the very beginning. It’s not something he invented or tried to shoehorn in,” says Danny Fingeroth, author of “Superman on the Couch: What Comic Book Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society.”
The first Superman story, published in 1938, stated he was sent to Earth from Krypton, a fictional doomed planet.
“It makes him not an immigrant of choice. It makes him an immigrant of necessity…a refugee,” Fingeroth says. “He’s someone who comes to Earth and to America, to then blend in and become as American as mom, the flag and apple pie.”
And, Fingeroth says, there are a lot of good reasons why these details are such a key part of Superman’s story.
Take the comic’s creators, for example.
Artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel were both the children of Jewish immigrants who’d fled rising antisemitism in Europe.
“Just given their backgrounds and their sympathies, I think it’s always been important that Superman comes from somewhere else,” Fingeroth says.
The Cleveland-based duo wrote Superman’s story as World War II loomed. The first page of his story describes him as “champion of the oppressed.”
